TomFlannery.com

It will all be over soon. I promise.

Hold your nose. Pull your lever. Go home and shower. Then go out and, to quote that self professed erotic politician Jim Morrison, get your kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.

This means you have to hurry, obviously.

We’re in agreement on one thing at least. We can’t take much more of this nonsense.

It’s Hillary’s hubris, her randy hubby, and her bad pant suits versus Trump’s whatever you want to call it. Intellectual vacancy? Irredeemable dumbness? Untreated aspergers? This is America, 2016. The rest of the world watches in fascinated horror, knowing that the person sitting in the oval office can still ruin their day faster than just about anybody else in the cosmos. And I’m not just talking about the potential for bomb dropping and wall-building. A stupid comment in the White House briefing room can send financial markets reeling. Hillary is supposedly out there using a hotmail account to conduct foreign policy and Trump is grabbing pussy’s by the score. What could possibly go wrong?

(And before you start hurling partisan invective my way bubba, know that I voted for Bernie Sanders. So none of this is my fault. You wanted change? You wanted to send shudders through the halls of power? A wild-haired liberal democratic socialist would have burned that place DOWN. But no……so….not it.)

Bernie was the Democrat in this race. Hillary is the Republican. And Trump is the….well…whatever it is he is. Fascist? WWF heel? “Puck” from MTVs “The Real World”?

Last night I sat in front of the TV as 4 political ads ran back to back the back to back. The first one attacked millionaire Katie McGinty for being an elitist with her heel on the poor middle class. The next one attacked her millionaire opponent Pat Toomey for being an elitist with his heel on the poor middle class. Both ads featured diabolically outraged middle class white people/actors explaining how a vote for the other would bring on a sort of cultural Armageddon. And I swear the narrator was the same for both ads. Before I could take all of this in, an anti-Trump ad blared, using his own words against him (most were bleeped out….he’s not exactly a majestic orator…). Then some anti-Hillary fare…something about her creating ISIS in her basement because she was pissed at Monica Lewinsky. Or something like that, I wasn’t really paying attention by that point.

Mindlessly, I pulled Facebook up on my phone and was greeted by some of the dumbest political commentary that’s ever been typed with two thumbs. The entire ghastly cycle just repeats itself over and over. I feel like Indiana Jones in that hole with all those snakes….watching as his torch flame gets lower and lower.

I haven’t unfriended anybody on Facebook over politics, so yay me, right? The fact that most of my Facebook “friends” aren’t friends at all has something to do with it, but not all. I think Trump is an ignorant, dangerous, sexist boor. In America I’m allowed to think this. At least for now. A lot of people in my feed think Hillary is a wily murderess with stacks of dead bodies in her basement. They are allowed to think this. At least for now. Embrace such freedoms. Because….well…..you know.

Life will go on. Somebody will be declared the winner. Pundits have asked Trump if he will “accept” the outcome if he loses, which might be the stupidest question in an age of stupid questions. Last I checked he doesn’t really have a choice. Ask Al Gore. Or the ghost of Anton Scalia. One thing America despises is a loser…sore or not. Ask Mike Dukakis. Or John Edwards.Or Mitt Romney.

Trump could be our next President (If he does win he should give Comey use of the Trump Plaza penthouse suite for the duration of his term. That would be 2020 or impeachment, whichever comes first. But I digress). Never underestimate the power of hate….both the kind he spews and the type that Hillary generates. At this point, it’s a push.

If Hillary wins she can look forward to obstructionist tactics that will make the current congress look like Obama’s beer buddies. And I don’t even want to think about how Bill is gonna spend his days irritating just about everybody.

In other words, and for vastly different reasons, we’re fucked either way. I no longer care.

I have to trust that our form of democracy is flexible enough to survive this type of paranoia fueled garbage. Once he can no longer pull off that wretched orange comb-over, Trump will crawl back into his personal tower…maybe he’ll show up on “Dancing With the Stars” in a few years. The Clintons will become extinct. Chelsea has way too much sense to get involved with politics…..so in 4 years we’ll all have a new demagogue to treat with. American is nothing if not wildly inventive when it comes to providing lip service to the unwashed masses.

With the bar so low…..we’re gonna have to dig to get under it pretty soon.

So just hold on a few more days. When the polls close I’ll meet you in the bar. And we can buy each other drinks.

And when, in four or eight or twelve years, when Michelle Obama runs for President, we’ll all look back on this campaign as being positively civil.

Hatred, squared.

Think about it.

Then do something about it.

Before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.

In a bit..

–tf